Hospital Harm

The latest data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) tell an important story

Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) can be divided into upper tract infections, which involve the kidneys (pyelonephritis), and lower tract infections, which involve the bladder (cystitis), urethra (urethritis), and prostate (prostatitis). Infection may spread from one site to the other. Although urethritis and prostatitis are infections that involve the urinary tract, the term UTI usually refers to pyelonephritis and cystitis (Imam, 2020a).

Birth injuries are those sustained during the birth process, which includes labor and delivery. They may be avoidable, or they may be unavoidable and occur despite skilled and competent obstetric care, as in an especially hard or prolonged labor or with an abnormal presentation (Prazad et al., 2019).

Delirium is a state of confusion that comes on very suddenly and lasts hours to days. It can cause changes in a person’s ability to stay alert, remember, be oriented to time or place, speak or reason clearly.

A retained foreign body is a patient safety incident in which a surgical object is accidentally left in a body cavity or operation wound following a procedure (Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI), 2016a).

Sepsis is defined as: "life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by dysregulated host response to infection" (Singer et al., 2016). It affects neonatal, pediatric, and adult patients worldwide. Differentiated from an uncomplicated infection by virtue of the dysregulated host response and acute organ dysfunction, sepsis can present as or progress to septic shock, recently redefined as: "a subset of sepsis in which particularly profound circulatory, cellular and metabolic abnormalities are associated with a greater risk of mortality than with sepsis alone." (Singer et al., 2016). Maternal sepsis is a life-threatening condition defined as an organ dysfunction caused by an infection during pregnancy, delivery, puerperium, or after an abortion (Escobar et al., 2020).

Wound healing is a critical outcome in surgery, and postoperative wound disruption is a serious complication. Surgical incisions are acute wounds that activate the healing process.

Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs defined as the presence of "new lung infiltrate plus clinical evidence that the infiltrate is of an infectious origin, which include the new onset of fever, purulent sputum, leukocytosis, and decline in oxygenation" (Kalil et al., 2016). Pneumonia can be caused by viruses, bacteria, and fungi and can cause mild to severe illness in people of all ages and (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020).

A Post Procedure infection is associated with a medical or surgical procedure and results from colonization with a bacterial load greater than the capability of the immune system to manage. These infections can significantly increase cost, morbidity and even mortality.